Why You Should Transcribe Conferences

Beth Worthy

4/19/2013

Focus group transcription is rapidly becoming a necessity for conference organizers. The advantages of focus group transcription are not insignificant. As the benefits of transcription are becoming increasingly well-known, transcription has begun to change the way that businesses do business, from their clients to their employees.

Though, it’s hectic enough trying to organize a conference, let alone squeeze in the time for transcription. Here is a list of reasons why you should transcribe conferences, and how to get them transcribed quickly.

Why Should I Transcribe?

Transcription services are important for a number of reasons, specifically as it relates to conferences in large auditoriums with a number of speakers. Sometimes, with the overlap, employees can’t get all the information they need. In addition to this, audio files are cumbersome. With a transcription, attendees can look up something they missed by the speaker and by time, as long as it’s time-stamped.

Additionally, the written content is more readily redistributed than audio content alone. Written content will be pulled up in free search engines as long as your SEO is on point, which means more traffic to your website. Also, short audio files with accompanying text allow for easy editing when it comes to the press.

How Do I Get Started?

Now, that you’re aware of at least some of the many benefits of transcription, it’s time for a crash course in how to go about having a conference transcribed without putting a strain on the finite resources of your event staff. It’s actually not that complicated.

Two weeks prior to the event, have a meeting with your audio-visual provider and your transcription partner. You shouldn’t need much longer than this. If it is geographically impossible to have a meeting with both of them, confer with both, and they will hook up with each other via phone or e-mail before the event.

In their communications, they will do the heavy-lifting, hammering out the details in regards to file delivery and file type. Additionally, the audio-visual coordinator will remove or clean up fragments of audio or video that did not come out as clean as they should have. What you have in the end is a verbatim transcription (verbatim transcriptions are used when two or more speakers can be heard), and two weeks that you won’t need to worry about it.

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Beth Worthy

Beth Worthy is the President of GMR Transcription Services, Inc an Orange County, California based company that has been providing accurate and affordable transcription services since 2004. She has enjoyed success at GMR for almost ten years now and has helped the company grow. Within two years of Beth managing GMR Transcription, it had doubled in sales and was named one of the OC Business Journal’s fastest-growing private companies. Outside of work, she likes spending time with her husband and two kids.